From a gaming perspective, the Consumer Electronics Show is usually pretty boring. There are some new controllers, usually fairly goofy, and that’s pretty much it. There are no game developers there and generally console manufacturers save the big news for E3 or the Tokyo Game Show.

So NVidia saw an opportunity and announced both a new streaming system and a portable game console, Project Shield.

Honestly, we’ve seen Project Shield before, although the Tegra 4 having a quad-core A15 CPU and 72 core custom GPU under the hood is… compelling. But it’s still basically an Android phone with an Xbox controller bolted onto it: It’ll play Android games or stream PC games if you have a high-end rig with the right NVidia chips and it’ll cost more, likely a lot more, than those crappy controllers with snap-in frames for your phone.

But those will be the only distinguishing features, at least according to what we know so far.

It’s not any sort of huge secret that game companies are looking closely at Linux and Android. The Ouya was a huge hit on Kickstarter, “two-inch” consoles like the Game Stick are becoming popular, Valve is actively developing for Linux, and Blizzard will apparently stop screwing around and release the World of Warcraft client for Linux they’ve been sitting on sometime this year, likely with an Android version arriving soon after.

But if this streaming service and handheld actually pair, something NVidia hasn’t admitted yet… That’s a pretty compelling item, right there. The ability to stream games anywhere with a strong WiFi connection is something that many dream of but nobody has, so far, managed to pull off.

Can NVidia do it? Good question. But if nothing else, it’s a pretty clear announcement. NVidia is saying with these products “Nobody is going to be buying our high-end components soon”. Moreover, they’ve believed this for a while: They admitted in a Q&A session that Grid has been in development for five years. When even the guys making the graphics cards think PC gaming is going to dump the PC, it’s time to listen.

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The latest Mac OS X uses the hardware accelerated video encoding hardware in Intel’s chipsets to do AirPlay streaming to an Apple TV. General usage and fullscreen Flash videos stream pretty well with minimal to no frame lag, but pretty noticeable color banding due to compression.

One day I tried streaming WoW for the heck of it and it got horrible frame rates, less than half of the 50+ FPS I got on my computer. I have zero hopes that the NVIDIA streaming would work any better,

When I look at this thing and the Ouya I can’t help but feel I’m ahead of the curve already. I use a jailbroken iPhone 4S with an iControlPad and Bluetrol. Granted the 4S isn’t exactly the highest end hardware anymore but it still plays everything and I get the benefit of physical controls without having to buy another expensive device with an overly specific purpose. I can even separate the controller and use it wirelessly with the phone hooked up to the TV over HDMI. I wish nVidia all the luck in the world with this project but trying to shove one more product between the phone and tablet isn’t the right direction to go in. Within six months of the Shield being released there will be actual Tegra4 phones and tablets which you’ll be able to tether a gamepad to.